Tuesday, December 31, 2013

I’ve always thought of it as a city of hard-working,
practical, no-nonsense people, reflecting its Scottish Presbyterian heritage.

It was the home of Sir James Fletcher, founder of a
construction empire, Henry Ely Shacklock, who made the country’s first electric
ranges, and Bendix Hallenstein, whose name lives on in the menswear chain he
established.

I wonder what such men would make of Dunedin today. Once a southern
bastion of industry and commerce, it’s now chiefly known for the torrent of
shrill, moralistic scare-mongering emanating from Otago University.

It seems hardly a week passes without someone from Otago
University, or one of its satellites in Christchurch and Wellington, warning us
that our drinking and eating habits are leading us to moral and physical ruin.

Granted, one of the functions of health academics is to undertake
research and to pass on their findings. But the constant diet (pardon the pun)
of doom-laden messages from Otago has all the overtones of a moral crusade. Dunedin has become the finger-wagging capital
of the world.

The Otago researchers’ findings always paint the blackest
picture imaginable. And the message is invariably the same: our consumption
habits are out of control and the government must act.

Underlying that is another message again: we are all at the
mercy of greedy purveyors of booze and high-risk foods whose wickedness must
be curbed by advertising bans and punitive taxes. Hostility to capitalism is never far from the
surface.

Doubtless the academic wowsers are buoyed by the success of
the campaign against smoking and hope to replicate its success by similarly
stigmatising the consumption of alcohol and fast food.

Significantly, Otago University was the source of a recent
report that called for smoking to be banned within a
ten-metre radius of doors and windows to buildings used by the public.

That’s the thing about zealots and
control freaks. They never let up. I shudder at the thought of the joyless,
buttoned-down society that would result if we gave way to their demands.

* * *

ON A RELATED note, some academics are reportedly fretting
that their role as the “conscience and critics” of society is under threat.

They are alarmed because they perceive that under the Key
government, the emphasis in tertiary education is shifting away from the arts –
which supposedly stimulate critical thinking – to subjects such as science and
engineering, which the academic hand-wringers deem to be far less useful.

The rest of us should lose no sleep over this. The notion
that universities function as the conscience and critics of society is self-serving
cant.

The phrase once meant something, and still would if all
academics genuinely respected intellectual freedom. But the truth is that many
university faculties slavishly observe a narrow ideological orthodoxy.

What most academics really mean when they talk about their
duty to serve as the conscience and critics of society is their right to promote
a left-wing agenda. In their fixed view of the world it’s inconceivable that
anyone not on the Left could even possess a conscience.

Conservative thinkers do exist in universities, but they are
as rare as rocking horse droppings. The few renegades who defy the approved
line tend to keep their heads down because it’s safer that way.

It’s a curious fact that while Marxism in the economic sense
is dead and buried, and no one promoting it can expect to be taken seriously, a
mutant offshoot called cultural Marxism is alive and well.

Cultural Marxism seeks to undermine traditional Western values
such as individualism, small government, the family and traditional morality.

Its proponents are nowhere more active than in what are
grandiosely known as the humanities and social sciences faculties of
universities. And it’s a fair bet these are the people most fearful that they
might no longer be able to masquerade as the conscience and critics of the rest
of us.

* * *

ONE OF THE most depressing news items in 2013 was the
announcement that the Monty Python team was to reform. I can see no good coming
of this.

Monty Python was a creature of its time, like the Beatles, and
no matter how much John Cleese and his comrades might wish to recapture the
magic, some things are better left undisturbed.

They are old men now. The mad energy that inspired the
Ministry of Silly Walks, the dead parrot sketch and the Argument Clinic has
long subsided.

Problem is, their ageing fans don’t want to let go. They are
like the tragics who yearn for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin to reform.

Sadly, the Pythons appear to have succumbed to the conceit
that they can do it all again. But the best tribute they can pay themselves is
to leave us with memories of their inspired lunacy in its full-blooded prime.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, December 18.)

It was hard not to feel a little cynical as the tributes
flowed for Nelson Mandela last week.

It seemed we were all friends now with the man once widely
denounced in the West as a terrorist (and who, to the embarrassment of the
American government, remained on a US terror watch list until 2008).

The world leaders who gathered in Soweto were ostensibly
there to pay homage, but being politicians they were also keen to bathe in Mr
Mandela’s reflected glory.

Rarely has any international statesman acquired such sainted
status. Only the Dalai Lama comes close, but then the Tibetan spiritual leader
has the huge advantage of never actually having had to engage in the messy
business of governing.

New Zealanders, meanwhile, were almost falling over each
other in their eagerness to flaunt their anti-apartheid credentials.

John Key had the good sense to keep his mouth firmly shut on
that score. He could hardly do otherwise, having famously said in a televised
election debate in 2008 that he couldn’t recall how he felt about the 1981
Springbok tour.

Mr Key aside, reticence was in short supply. If you didn’t
have a story to tell about actually meeting Mr Mandela, the next best thing was
to recall the heroic role you played in the 1981 anti-tour protests. The moral
high ground has rarely been so crowded.

There were times during the past week when it seemed no
South African whites were willing to admit ever having been supporters of the
racist minority regime than ran the country for nearly 50 years. Even formerly
staunch members and supporters of the white government spoke of their fondness
for Mandela.

What a pity they didn’t feel so favourably disposed toward
him in the 27 years he was banged up on Robben Island.

In New Zealand, it seemed people were equally unprepared to
admit they had been pro-tour in 1981. But we know that at least half the
population was.

The majority of New Zealanders, although uncomfortable with
the idea of apartheid, didn’t feel strongly enough to do much about it. The
love of rugby, and the desire to see the All Blacks prevail over their
strongest rivals, trumped concerns about morality and justice.

The truth was that New Zealanders identified more closely
with South Africans than with any of our other rival rugby nations. New
Zealand apologists for South Africa said you had to go there to understand why
it was in everyone’s interests for the whites to run the show.

If you hadn’t been there, the argument ran, you had no right
to judge. This always seemed a specious argument to me – rather like saying you
had to personally experience Nazi Germany to know that Hitler was a monster.

Prime minister Robert Muldoon, a shrewd judge of the
national mood, cleverly played on the theme that New Zealand was not going to
be pushed around by other countries, many of them corrupt and undemocratic, telling
us who we could play sport with.

He deliberately provoked antagonism from black Africa and
delighted in baiting Abraham Ordia, admittedly not the most endearing of men,
of the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa. African countries – 26 of them,
including strong sporting nations such as Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia – retaliated
by boycotting the 1976 Montreal Olympics in protest at the All Blacks’ tour of
South Africa earlier that year.

Mr Muldoon managed the issue so adroitly that most New
Zealanders believed we were in the right. It was us against a bunch of African
tyrants and their leftist sympathisers in the West.

The tide eventually ran out for Mr Muldoon in the 1984
general election, when the rebellious baby-boomer generation that had marched
against apartheid and the Vietnam War graduated from the streets into politics.

I believe the 1981 protests were as much a defiant reaction
against Muldoonist authoritarianism and the stifling conservatism of the time
as they were about the injustice of apartheid. But the protesters were on the
right side of history, as attested by the paucity of people now willing to
admit they were pro-tour.

The principal defenders of the tour, of course, have passed
on. Sir Robert Muldoon died in 1992. Ces Blazey, the Rugby Union chairman at
the time – a man who commanded respect by his unfailing civility in the face of
abuse and provocation – went in 1998. Ron Don, the rugby union firebrand whom
the protesters loved to hate, lived till 2011.

Of those still living who supported the tour, a cynical view
is that they have suffered a convenient collective memory lapse. But a more
charitable interpretation is that Mr Mandela succeeded in changing their minds.

What no one can take away from him is that he achieved a
peaceful and bloodless transition from a brutally oppressive white regime to a
democracy – albeit a flawed one – where whites and blacks mostly live in
relative harmony.

Many people would not have thought that possible. Things
could have gone catastrophically wrong had Mr Mandela not been able, through
his charisma and personal example, to restrain the natural desire for
retribution.

Unfortunately it seems that’s as far as his achievements
went. His successors in office have largely betrayed whatever vision and
idealism he may have embodied. South Africa today is governed by a corrupt, incompetent
black elite where previously it was ruled by an oppressive but generally
efficient white one.

I have a feeling Mr Mandela knew this. Television footage of him in
his last months showed a man who looked as if he had lost heart. And who could blame
him, when his family was being torn apart in an ugly feud and South African police were
shooting down black miners in scenes remarkably reminiscent of the worst days
of apartheid?

I cringed at the frequently replayed scene of President
Jacob Zuma visiting him – eager, no doubt, to portray himself as the natural
inheritor of Mr Mandela’s mantle – and clutching his hand while he (Zuma)
played to the cameras.

Mr Mandela was powerless to say or do anything, but his
expression suggested he would just as soon have had a cobra dropped in his lap.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

THE LATEST census confirms what was already obvious: New
Zealand has quietly undergone a profound demographic revolution. From being one
of the world’s most homogeneous societies, it has become one of the most
diverse.

One in four New Zealanders was born overseas – an
astonishing statistic that makes us one of the world’s most immigrant-friendly
societies. Asian ethnic groups have almost doubled in size since 2001.

The change is most dramatic in Auckland, where a 2011 study
found that 40 percent of the population was born in another country.

What’s even more remarkable is that, in contrast with
Britain and Australia, this has been accomplished without any obvious social or
racial tension.

Apart from the pressure on housing prices, New Zealand has painlessly
absorbed the new arrivals. Our embrace of ethnic diversity confirms that we are
essentially a liberal, tolerant and easy-going society.

Yet that social harmony is potentially under threat – and
the great irony is that the threat comes not from conservative New Zealanders,
but from people purporting to represent immigrant groups.

On Jim Mora’s Afternoons
programme on Radio New Zealand this week, Dr Camille Nakhid, chairwoman of
Auckland Council’s ethnic people’s advisory panel (to which Bevan Chuang,
erstwhile paramour of mayor Len Brown, was also appointed), talked about the
need for ethnic groups to have more say in local government.

No one could object to such groups having an advisory
function, but Dr Nakhid, an academic who lectures in something called social
sciences (no surprises there), was talking about much more than that.

She believes ethnic representatives should be given a
statutory role in decision-making – just like Auckland Council’s non-elected
Maori statutory board, whose two members recently exercised a casting vote in
favour of a living wage for council employees.

Dr Nakhid talked airily about not compromising democratic
principles, but in fact was advocating exactly that. She seemed to draw a
self-serving distinction between democratic “principles”, which she believes
justify special rights for ethnic groups, and something less important called
the democratic “process”.

Apparently the tired old idea of one person having one vote
doesn’t quite cut it anymore.

She talked about the need for ethnic minorities to have
“separate but equal” representation with Maori in Auckland – in other words,
compounding what is already an abuse of democracy. And she didn’t really answer
Mora’s question about how ethnic representation could be arranged when Auckland
has an estimated 200 ethnic groups. A minor technicality, no doubt.

If Dr Nakhid had deliberately set out to create friction
where currently there is none, she couldn’t have found a better way to go about
it. Nothing is more likely to arouse resentment of immigrant groups than
demands for privileged treatment.

And here’s another thing. We can safely assume one of the
reasons so many people immigrate to New Zealand is that it’s an infinitely more
democratic society than the ones they left behind. To then call for a change in
the way our governance is organised seems downright perverse.

* * *

OUTRAGE is the defining mood of our time. Upset by the way
you’ve been treated by a bus driver or an airport security officer? Go to the
media and your grievance will be on tonight’s news bulletin and tomorrow’s
front page.

Offended by a throwaway line from Bob Dylan in a year-old
interview about the way some Croatians behaved in World War Two? If you’re
fortunate enough to live in France, you can get the state to prosecute him on
your behalf under laws governing “hate speech” – one of the most chilling
phrases in the language.

Spotted an opportunity to kneecap a couple of talkback hosts
you don’t like? Orchestrate a social media campaign to frighten weak-kneed companies
into withdrawing their advertising and intimidate the station into taking the
hosts off the air.

Avowed Marxist Giovanni Tiso did just that in his campaign
against RadioLive hosts John Tamihere and Willy Jackson, and must have been
thrilled at how easily he was able to make capitalism look gutless. Mass
bullying has never been easier than in the era of Facebook and Twitter.

* * *

A LATE CONTENDER has come to hand in the quest for the most
flatulent public relations statement of the year. It’s always a hotly contested
category, but I think we have a clear winner.

Congratulating itself on being
named PR Agency of the Year 2013, Professional Public Relations said in a press
release: “The award follows a transformational year at PPR. The agency has
rolled out an innovative channel agnostic client experience across the
company’s seven Australian and New Zealand offices with account teams now
providing a mix of owned, earned and bought strategies, services and channels
to help brands tell and share their stories.”You almost have to admire a firm that can display such magnificent contempt for the English language.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, December 4.)

When I was a boy growing up in a small Hawke’s Bay town,
every household would receive a free weekly guide to the films showing at the
local picture theatre.

There was a mini-review of each film and it became a
standing joke in our family that they were almost invariably described as
“heart-warming”.

As a result, I’ve never been able to use the term
“heart-warming” without a slightly derisive sneer. But a couple of days ago I
watched a film that really was heart-warming, in the sense that you left the
theatre feeling better about life and your fellow human beings than you might
have been when you walked in.

Gardening with Soul
is a feature-length documentary about Sister Loyola Galvin, who looks after the
gardens at the Home of Compassion in the Wellington suburb of Island Bay –
surely a challenging environment for even the greenest of fingers, given that
the soil is not naturally fertile (Sr Loyola’s garden survives only with
copious applications of home-made compost) and the climate often punishing.

Film maker Jess Feast spent a year observing Sister Loyola
and clearly formed a close and mutually affectionate bond with her. It’s a
simple film, beautifully shot and recorded. Every frame is impeccably composed,
yet there’s nothing arty or pretentious about it. Like the character at its
centre, it’s a no-nonsense piece of work.

Sister Loyola joined the Catholic order known as the
Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion in her mid-20s, after the man she expected
to marry went away to the Second World War and never came back. It can’t have
been an easy decision; her father, a Taranaki farmer to whom she was very devoted,
was firmly set against her entering the convent and took years to come around.

Now 90, Sister Loyola is slowed by age but mentally as sharp
as a new pin, with bright, bird-like eyes. She radiates wisdom and practical,
common-sense spirituality. Compassion, too, as you might expect, given the name
of the order she joined. She says – and
I hope I’m quoting her more or less accurately – that it’s possible to see God
in everyone, even the most unlikely people, if you look hard enough. If you
could bottle that attitude, you’d call it Essence of Christianity.

She’s also quite frank, and jokes that she’s safely past the
age when she risked being fired for speaking out of turn. She doesn’t
hesitate to say what she thinks, for example, about the scandal of sexual abuse
by Catholic priests.

I have encountered nuns like Sr Loyola before. The Catholic
Church, which I grew up in, has a tradition of strong – you might even say
stroppy – women. There’s no better example than Mother Suzanne Aubert, the
doughty Frenchwoman who founded the order to which Sr Loyola belongs.

Arriving in New Zealand in 1860, Aubert decided she hadn’t
come halfway around the world to teach French and embroidery to the daughters
of wealthy Aucklanders. Instead, she devoted herself to Maori and later to the
care of the orphaned, the unwanted, the destitute and the disabled.

In many cases, formidable women such as Aubert had to
overcome obstacles placed in their path by the male hierarchy of the Church.
You get the feeling that the nuns had a very clear idea of what needed to be
done and their male superiors often just got in the way. (For example, nuns
working in the backblocks were told they should ride their horses side-saddle,
in the interests of decorum – an instruction they sensibly ignored.)

There’s a moment in Gardening
with Soul when Sister Loyola, reflecting on the Catholic hierarchy, talks
about the nature of power. She doesn’t develop the idea but I wonder whether
she was gently suggesting that men, and more specifically the male fondness for
power, are problems for the Catholic Church.

If that’s indeed what she was talking about, it’s not just
Catholicism that has a problem with authoritarian male hierarchies.

I believe that most organised religion is largely about the
exercise of power and control, and these are usually – if not exclusively –
male preoccupations.

This is certainly true of faiths that are organised
hierarchically, whether it’s Catholicism, Judaism, Islam or Mormonism. In all
such religions, power is exercised by men – a striking anachronism in the modern
Western world, where women have otherwise rejected the notion of male control.

Only days ago I read that an Israeli woman had been ordered
by a religious court to have her son circumcised, against her will, or face
fines of nearly $200 a day for every day the procedure was not carried out.

It astonished me to learn that in Israel, which otherwise
gives the impression of being a modern, liberal democracy, rabbinical courts
have legal jurisdiction on religious issues. It almost goes without saying that
the rabbis involved are men, and that their edicts, if translated from
religious mumbo-jumbo, would read: “This is the way things must be done because,
er, because they’ve always been done this way. And besides, we say so.”

In fact, reading between the lines of the rabbinical court’s
ruling, what’s clear is that the rabbis were terrified that if one defiant soul
succeeded in breaking ranks, the power they have exercised unchallenged for centuries
might begin to crumble.

The article was accompanied by a photo showing a
circumcision ceremony taking place in a crowded synagogue. What was noticeable
was that virtually all the faces were male. Barely visible, at the very back of
the room, were a handful of women straining for a view of the proceedings. No
prizes for guessing who calls the shots, then.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with Islam. The
blokes rule there, too, albeit in an even more repressive fashion.

Can Catholicism claim to be any better? Well, yes. Women do
have a say in the Church (as they do, no doubt, in the more liberal strands of
Judaism), but it’s extremely limited. Even amid the welcome winds of change
blowing through the Catholic Church since the election of the new pope, you
still get the impression it would be a cold day in Hell before the cardinals
and the bishops relinquished their hold on power.

But what a different Church it might be if the male hierarchy
were flattened and good, sensible women were allowed to get on with things
unimpeded.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.